The "fragmented" coordination between
relief actors in the Philippines following Typhoon Haiyan last month
underscores the need for artificial intelligence to streamline disaster
response, says a team behind such an effort. The ORCHID project, a consortium
of UK universities and private firms, aims to make this possible by combining
human and artificial intelligence into an efficient complementary unit known as
a Human Agent Collective (HAC).

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The computer systems being developed
can assume tasks such as directing surveillance
drones, resource management and search planning, says David Jones,
head of Rescue Global, the disaster response organization responsible for
testing the software next year.

"Coordination of such a large
response [after a disaster] is so challenging without technological assistance
that makes data
more accessible," he says on mission in the
Philippines.

"Bringing humans and artificial
intelligence together is the only way to get the job done better."

Computers' data-crunching abilities
mean they are good at making sense of the huge amounts of information generated
during an emergency from local status reports, social media,
and the array of organizations involved in the relief effort.

By collecting and analyzing these
data, HAC systems can flexibly implement a number of activities vital for
disaster response, says Jones.

Machines not only complete many of
these jobs better than humans, but by taking on these complex calculations they
allow experts to concentrate on more nuanced tasks such as analyzing the
content of photographs or video, and strategic planning.

For HAC systems to be successful,
this division of labor must be accounted for and the right balance found
between artificial and human input, says Sarvapali Ramchurn, ORCHID
applications theme leader from the UK-based University of Southampton.

He believes that the field trials in
the Bay of Bengal planned for next year will go a long way towards showing how
effective HACs can be, and pave the way for a big impact in the future.